College football

FSU, Miami highlight ACC slate

By BRIAN LANDMAN
Published February 3, 2004

Florida State and Miami will provide the first glimpse of the new-look Atlantic Coast Conference in a made-for-TV Labor Day showdown, but Virginia Tech will be first up for a league poised to redefine itself.

The Hokies, who along with Miami bolted from the Big East, open against co-national champion Southern California Aug. 28 in the Black Coaches Association Football Classic in Washington. Their ACC regular-season finale is Dec. 4 at Miami.

The Seminoles have met Miami in early October in recent years, but the earlier-than-normal game for the perennial powers is just one of the quirks in ACC expansion.

Needing another nonconference foe to make up for Miami becoming a conference game, the Seminoles added an Oct. 9 game at Syracuse. Rounding out FSU's nonconference slate are previously scheduled games in Tallahassee Sept. 18 against Alabama-Birmingham and Nov. 20 against Florida.

Though the Seminoles won't play Georgia Tech for the next two years, the conference schedule remains daunting: Clemson, which stunned FSU 26-10 last season in a game that might have saved Tommy Bowden's job, comes to Tallahassee Sept. 25; improving Virginia visits Oct. 16; FSU plays at Wake Forest Oct. 23 and at Maryland Oct. 30; and, after hosting Duke, FSU plays at North Carolina State on a Thursday, Nov. 11.

"The ACC has gotten better and better every year and it will be even better in 2004," FSU coach Bobby Bowden said in a statement. "Now you add Miami as an ACC team in the mix for next year and our schedule has got to be one of the toughest in the country again. I know it sounds old, but I don't know anybody else who plays Miami and Florida."